Emergency Antiviral Drug Discovery During a Pandemic - a Case Study on the Application of Natural Compounds to Treat COVID-19

The
spreading COVID-19 pandemic has brought the world to a halt in 2020. One of the
major challenges is the lack of effective antiviral drugs. Drug and vaccine
development typically takes years; a practical approach to formulate
knowledge-based prescriptions is to conduct in
silico screening for drugs and
compounds that has the potential to disrupt viral protein functions. By
evaluating the dataset from the “Shennong project”, an in silico
screening of the DrugBank library against SARS-CoV-2 proteins, we identified
chlorogenic acid and rutin displayed a strong affinity with diverse viral
proteins. Chlorogenic acid is naturally present in coffee in large quantity,
and rutin is available as nutraceutical products, both compounds are considered
safe to consume, hence could potentially aid the recovery or treatment for
COVID-19 patients at low health risk. We emphasise that the results require
further clinical clarification, the impact of this work shall be examined by professionals
carefully.